Home Is Where the Car Is

A couple built a place for their vintage autos, then restored a 19th-century New Jersey farmhouse

When Kim McCullough moved to New Jersey from California to take a job as the vice president of marketing for Jaguar Land Rover North America, she looked for a home for herself, her husband, their dog—and an expanding vintage-car collection.

In 2011, she and her husband, Mitch, both car enthusiasts, purchased an 11-acre farm in Morris County in northern New Jersey for about $1 million that had a 19th-century stone farmhouse and a 150-year-old barn, among other small buildings.

“We thought, ‘Oh how romantic; we can store the cars in the barn,’” Ms. McCullough, 55, said. “Then you realize, it’s a barn—critters come in and out, and the winters—it just wouldn’t work.”

So in addition to their meticulous restoration of the house, they ended up building a climate-controlled garage for their collection, which now numbers about 10 cars, including a 1954 Jaguar XK120.

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The new building has an epoxy-paint floor and walls covered with photos and auto memorabilia, with plenty of shelf space for equipment and spare parts. Each car has its own charging station to keep batteries from dying between outings. Wide doors at either end allow easy access. In addition to rallies and other events, the two drive their cars on local roads. “We exercise them all regularly,” quipped Mr. McCullough, 57 years old, an automotive journalist.

The couple spent two years and some $400,000 to upgrade the estate, including renovating the house and other buildings, and building the garage at a cost of about $70,000. They also bought an adjacent parcel, bringing their total property to 40 mostly wooded acres—perfect for their two mastiffs, Chapman and Hazel.

The couple said they took care to build the garage so that it resembles the nearby barn and fits in with property—where wild turkeys wander amid the chicken coops and sheds.

They wanted “to do things that made sense and were also respectful of the original building,” said Ms. McCullough. It’s the same approach they take in restoring their cars.

The couple met in the early 1990s, when both worked for Mazda, and married in 1994. They started collecting vintage cars about 10 years later. “I resisted it for a while, and then I came over to her side,” said Mr. McCullough. Now, “we’ve gone crazy.”

In addition to the Jaguar XK120, which they recently brought to Italy for the Mille Miglia rally, they own a powder-blue Jaguar E-Type, a slender 1960 Lotus 18 race car and a 1956 Land Rover.

Their love of automobiles also is evident inside the four-bedroom house, a Dutch Colonial they believe was built in the early 1800s. Throughout the house, the walls are decorated with 1930s ad posters that Ms. McCullough had restored and framed. Also on display are photos from the 1950s and 1960s—like the black-and-white picture of Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Todd in a Jaguar XK120, the same model the McCulloughs own.

When they first walked into the house, “it had a very comforting feel,” Ms. McCullough recalled. “You could immediately picture yourself in the winter, with the fireplace.”

But over the years “a lot of things had been added to it,” she said, including a large, “overbearing” addition done in the 1980s.

They removed that addition, in the process discovering a brick doorway that had been hidden. They then repaired and resealed the home’s original stone, and added a new wing with a master bedroom, library and patio, using stone similar to the original.

“People come and look at this and think it’s the old part,” Mr. McCullough said of the new wing. “It’s two years old.”

The home’s original exterior walls are visible in parts of the new rooms, including the master bath. “It’s rustic but beautiful stone, so you want to use it,” Ms. McCullough said.

They used reclaimed barn wood—from other properties—to build stairs down to the library, where built-in shelves hold their automotive reference books.

They designed the master bedroom around a piece Ms. McCullough already had: a stall door from a Kentucky horse farm. “I thought, ‘I love that door, I’m going to figure out what to do with it,’” she recalled. Now it serves as the door to the master closet.

They also restored the barn, replacing the roof and redoing the lighting. The space is largely unadorned except for a 1957 neon Pegasus—a logo of Exxon Mobil—they bought from an antique dealer in California. Ms. McCullough said the barn is a great space for throwing parties, but visitors always want to see the cars.

“When we have guests, this is another room,” Mr. McCullough said of the garage. “Everyone comes out here.”

Ms. McCullough added: “It’s been so great being able to have a dedicated building like this. It’s being able to bring together everything that we love so much.”